


Vines from Academics, with love

by Ayleid



Series: Dragon's Guide [2]
Category: Overwatch (Video Game)
Genre: Epic Friendship, Gen, Making Vines, Vines, academic vines, yes you read right
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-16
Updated: 2017-03-16
Packaged: 2018-10-06 02:57:46
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,548
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10324025
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ayleid/pseuds/Ayleid
Summary: Genji is on his way home when he bumps into Lúcio. As usual, Lúcio has the best ideas.





	

**Author's Note:**

> This was to be the part of Dragon's Guide but from narrative reasons I'm taking it out. Here it is though, it's for all your enjoyment. :) It's sometime in the end of March in Book 2.

As Genji was going home one evening, walking down the street beside the university’s Sport Science departments he found his mind wandering and picking up all sorts of interesting thoughts; the aerodynamic acceleration of figure skates when equipped with miniature air-breathing rocket engines and how he could modify the currently existing Kestrel space rocket engine to emit colorable gas? If he could apply that to skates, people could skate on rockets which left colourful stripes behind them, if he could… keep the overheat hazard low and lower the risk of melting the ice, keep it afforda-- 

“Genji!”

As he snapped out of his ivory tower of physics, Genji forgot about the hazardously icy sidewalk for a moment and almost slipped on it. He waved in a quite undignified fashion until he found his balance again in a few seconds, laughing at the weird sensation. “Oh-oh, wow!”

When he turned his head and recognized the person waving wildly at him from the other side of the street, a wide and happy smile was immediately on his face, “Lúcio!”

He couldn’t miss the concerned way Lúcio pocketed his hands and trotted over to his side,  “You okay?”

“Yeah, I almost slipped but I’m fine,” at Genji’s playful wink, the Brazilian researcher finger-gunned and replied in the same fashion, except raising his other hand to shake hands with his friend.

“Ninja reflexes, dude. I keep telling you.”

“I know right? I tell you, it’s because of the heelies.”

“No way!” Lúcio shook his head, laughing at the assumption, “no way, Genji!”

“Yeah, I used to slip backwards with them in the beginning I know the feeling! Even on skates, I can do it.”

“No, I mean you still wear those? Man, it’s been a while but I haven’t seen you with them for so long I didn’t think you’d still actually wear them!”

“Walking is for the average humans, Lúcio. I dash through the present realm and the beyond.”

Admitting to the genius of his friend, the Brazilian researcher nodded with profound wisdom,  “I can’t help but agree, my friend. Although your feeble attempts at roller skating are still inferior.”

Donning an official and serious tone in reply, Genji nodded in the required fashion, "that will forever remain your domain of expertise."

For a moment Lúcio raised a questioning, mocking eyebrow and Genji shut his eyes in the way one would imitate an aristocrat. A couple of seconds later they both began to laugh and Lúcio playfully bumped his fist into his friend's shoulder. 

"Genji, we missed you, where have you been?"

“I could ask the same from you. You haven’t graced us with your presence for so long?”

“I grace the halls of musical therapy research, you should consider joining!" the other said, "we could really use your expertise in programming, you’d get the hang for it very easily. Oh, by the way, Hana has already joined so you wouldn’t be a sad lone circuit-nerd surrounded by psychology majors.”

“Oh, so now she is the resident lone and sad circuit-nerd.” 

With a tilt of his head, Lúcio pursed his lips and sighed in a teasingly sad, dramatic way at which Genji was already playfully raising an eyebrow. “Yeah, have some empathy bro, join up!”

“Yeah, you totally got me hooked,” he ended up saying, purposefully lacking enthusiasm but ended up laughing anyway when Lúcio made a disgusted noise,

“Oh no, please, Mr. Rutledge is enough with his hook puns…”

“Are you coming to Cambridge in May? Would be great to have you there.”

For a few seconds Lúcio raised an index finger to sign his contemplation before answering, “actually, I might just make it from visiting home but Hana is one-hundred-and-ten percent going. She’d never miss your and Angela’s panel,” he added with a smile when their gazes met and Genji replied with a knowing, grateful nod. 

“I’d very much appreciate you both being there.”

“C’mon, we know it’s important and besides, you’ve got some really cool stuff in the making, we’d love to see it. I know that Miss Vaswani is also excited.”

That helped easing the Japanese man’s thoughts, “I know, she is having a hard time not asking me all the time! It’ll be great when the plans will be published and we can finally talk freely about it.”

“Dude, you tell me! What I saw about your robot so far, he looks sick awesome.”

Touched and grateful, Genji raised a palm to spread it across his chest, “alright, you buttered me up good, what is it that you want?”

“Actually, I was waiting for Hana we are making vines.”

For a moment Genji’s mind blanked. All consuming whiteness. 

Vines with Lúcio and Hana. Vines. Lúcio. Hana. All the craziness and fun, laughing for minutes so hard it would hurt for days afterwards, his rib cage would be sore so badly. Posting the vines on facebook and seeing the students and the staff reacting. All the fun, all the laughing, the situations, re-taking one scene so many times but with the precision of two engineers and one psychology major… Genji slowly shook his head with all seriousness he could muster.

“Lúcio…my friend… you have my utmost support.”

His friend’s playful wink and the wide, knowing grin across his lips were his answer.

“You bet, Genji.”

“I’ll text Zenyatta. Will arrive home later tonight.”

“You do that.”

. . .

When Hana arrived, Genji winked at her and she smacked his shoulder for being so smug. 

“Oh look, I’m Genju the heelys prodigy of the campus, named my ruler Dragonblade…” she imitated him with mocked seriousness, fixing the collar of her shirt, at which Genji couldn’t help but laugh.

“Genju-” Lúcio’s laugh filled the corridors with an echo, “then who am I?”

“Earth calling Team Rocket,” Hana gaped at the title Genji used to address both of them, “first vine, I need a white shirt and…”

“Let’s gel your hair slick, Genji!”

“That’s exactly what he needs,” Lúcio clicked his thumb and middle finger and already strode to his bathroom, “Hana, do you want to be the student or me…?”

“You’re better at acting like you’re interested in something,” replied the other engineer while Genji raised his thumb in agreement.

“True that…” 

Hana folded her arms and squinted as she sized Genji up and down, “by the way, do you still remember how to do the eyeliner you did it back then?”

It did take a few seconds but Genji recollected his memories and cleared his throat with a raised index-finger, “I might need your help with that. Haven’t done it in five years or more…”

Suddenly a white dress shirt landed on his head and Genji quickly took his pullover and green shirt off to change into the new piece of clothing while Hana went back to the entrance hall and dug deeply in her backpack for the small make-up bag. 

Soon after Lúcio emerged from the bathroom, his hair in a ponytail and an oversized pair of thick-framed glasses on his nose to look like an overzealous student, he also walked to his bookcase to take several encyclopedias into his arms and stack them with rulers, pens, highlighters and post-it notes.

“We are going full-on newbie over here.”

“I think you need a calendar too there, like…”

“Yeah, Hana--”

“It’s here, hold on--”

“Oh, oh, wait! I have my calculator here.”

“Yess, Genji, bring it forth my friend.”

“White brick at the ready…” he grinned and took the wide and thick engineering calculator from his messenger bag. As he handed it to Lúcio and took a good hard look at the `newbie overzealous university student starter pack´ with his eyes, he could barely stifle a laugh.

“Okay, sit down Genji and do your makeup, Lúcio let me fix your clothes. You have to look immaculate and buttoned up to your neck.”

“Ah, yeah, sorry.”

“I think we need a messenger bag full of pins and buttons? I support whales?” The Japanese engineer pulled up a chair beside the dining table and began setting all necessary makeup in front of himself. To answer his question, Hana laughed first then shook her head apologetically,

“Yea, we should have gotten Fawkes’ high school bag for this. I remember it’s full of buttons but nah, it won’t be in the frame.”

“Okay, nevermind.”

As he placed Hana’s hand mirror on the table and took the eyeliner into his hand, Genji felt another wave of laughter wash through his body and since he couldn’t stop laughing, he ended up lying half across the dining table while Hana fixed Lúcio’s shirt, tucked it in the bright blue jeans and pulled the pants up on the guy so high Genji could even spot a painful squint.

“What,” Hana smirked playfully, looking at Lúcio then Genji. “You done with your makeup, Professor Genji-boy?”

“Wait, I can’t, I’m laughing… We’re the disgrace of the staff right now.”

“No, we only mirror a phenomenon we face every single year…remember the guy who asked if he can use the class notes in his course paper? Like, what, is this high school or…”

“My favourite is when they ask,” Hana rolled her eyes in exasperation and imitated a very high, oblivious and annoying voice, “‘Miss Song, do we have to cite in the bibliography everything we quote…?’ Well, if you don’t want to be kicked for plagiarism?”

With an eyeroll mirroring Hana’s, Genji nodded. “Don’t even get me started on the questions about the exam... “ clearing his throat, he imitated a deep-voiced male student, “‘teach, is this going to be in the exam…?’ No, I’m just entertaining myself, talking for hours about one single subject.”

“Okay, I have an idea,” Lúcio looked around the room and visibly contemplated on the arrangements of roles. “Genji, your makeup? When you’re done we will begin, just… Hana, will you hold the camera?”

“Yup, now let me set up the lights.”

“Okay, I’ll ask a question from Genji, we need a semi-close up from above like… you stand on the sofa.”

“Okay.”

“Genji, you stay at the table but finish your damn makeup already!”

“I didn’t do it for five years, my hand is shaking!”

Hana resisted a sigh and simply cleared her throat. As she exchanged a knowing look with her friend on the left and the man with the long locks shrugged, the Korean engineer rolled her eyes again. 

“Alright, let me do it. But then let me do the foundation too.”

“Careful with this…” Genji leant away from her approach for a moment and swiped an artistic gesture around his chin, voice suddenly dropping an octave to imitate Hanzo, “excellence…”

The simplest unimpressed raise of Hana’s eyebrows had the older engineer cough in embarrassment and sit straight in the chair. “Okay, sorry.”

This seemed to only make Zenyatta laugh. Perhaps he was the only one who understood the reference.

. . .

His laughter echoed in the flat and Zenyatta already wiped his eyes twice. The new videos Hana, Lúcio and Genji made were on the Japanese engineer’s facebook and he even called home to tell Zenyatta about them.

The first one got him already holding his tummy from the waves of laughing. 

Lúcio held several encyclopaedias buried under stacks of pens, highlighters, even an engineering calculator (most likely Genji’s, judging from the black kanjis ornamenting the white lid) with excited, bright eyes while wearing a fully buttoned and slightly small dress shirt.    
  
"Professor, professor! Do we have to include everything we cite in the bibliography?"   
  
The image snapped to Genji, with his glasses seductively low, first two buttons down on his white shirt and winking with immaculate deep purple eyeliner.    
  
"Of course not... only me...."

The enthusiasm and intense fun shining in Lúcio’s eyes were contagious and after watching the video a few times Zenyatta couldn’t wait to see more. 

The second got tears in his eyes from laughing, he had to pause the video and simply learn how to breath for an entire minute, a worried Bastion poking his side from the left, accidentally tickling him in the process.

“I can’t’-” he lost his voice at some point from breathlessness, clutching his mid-section and lying forth on the table to put his forehead down. When Bastion poked him again in the side he almost jumped off the chair but stabilized himself, “good gracious, I almost fell! Dear Bastion, I would prefer you not poking me any further, if you don’t mind?” He giggled, and the poor robot kept looking up at him, his fingers awkwardly holding on to Zenyatta’s knit woolen sweater.

“I am alright, my friend. I am having fun. You saw me laugh before.”

How could these people come up with these videos? 

In the second vine Genji came out of a door which had the paper sign “Theoretical Physics Exam” scribbled with a sharpie on it. Genji had the previously worn white dress shirt on, this time buttoned up completely and he looked just the right amount of exhausted and disheveled. Beside the door Hana waited for him, looking like Genji had just came out of some terrible experience, she even went as far to hold her hands theatrically to her chest.

“How did it go?” She asked, worried and already yanking at Genji’s sleeve who took a deep breath and straightened up.

“It wasn’t so bad… I think I did well. Maybe I'll pass this time?”

Sliding at just the right speed on a skateboard, Lúcio dressed like a saint in white robes passed by in front of the screen, imitating a low, serious voice.

“Overconfidence… is a flimsy shield.”

Genji looked like he was about to cry, wiping invisible tears with his engineering ruler, Dragonblade.

Zenyatta snapped his palm to his forehead, knowing in an instant whose idea it was to use this exact line. This time he laughed so long, poor Bastion began poking him again. He knew Genji, Hana and even Lúcio are going to have to explain some things to Mr. Reyes soon enough but as he scrolled down to the comments, the students of the faculty seemed to shared the researchers’ sentiments. Beside the majority cheering their teachers on to make more videos, many of them agreed that Genji and Miss Vaswani were the next heirs to Mr. Reyes’s iron throne of merciless exams. 

All the other vines were creative in all sorts of ways, using whatever resources the three researchers had at their disposal. Since it had been a while that they had fun similarly like this, Zenyatta wondered how he could join and help in making more videos in the future, after all, Lúcio quoted his trademark saying in the second vine and Zenyatta immediately recognised himself there. 

When Genji finally returned home, they watched the vines together once more and Zenyatta enjoyed the warm fluttering in his chest, listening to his friend and imagining all the silly situations they got into. Since Genji still wore the immaculately applied eyeliner, Zenyatta made a comment about that and the old days to which the engineer’s reply was a simple, dismissive wave of his hand, his hazelnut eyes momentarily distant.

“It wasn’t worth all the trouble,” he added, warm gaze returning to Zenyatta once more. "I wouldn't trade the present for anything."

**Author's Note:**

> I hope you liked this piece! Thank you so much for reading, your feedback and support gives me tons of motivation to go on.


End file.
